First freedom, and then glory; when that fails,
Wealth, vice, corruption, barbarism at last;
And History, with all its volumes vast,
Hath but one page.”
Byron.
PART I.
ANCIENT ORIENTAL LITERATURES.
CHAPTER I.
HINDOO LITERATURE.
THE SANSCRIT LANGUAGE.
Characteristics.—Oldest of all the Indo-European tongues, and most closely resembling the common parent that is lost, is Sanscrit—the language spoken by those fair-skinned Aryans who more than thirty centuries ago, swarming through the Hindoo Koosh passes, made the sunny plains of Hindostan their own (page 16). Sanscrit spread over most of the peninsula; and the meaning of the word, perfected, is significant of the flexibility, refinement, regularity, and philosophical system of grammar, by which the language was distinguished. In luxuriance of inflection it was unequalled. Its nouns were varied according to eight cases, and three numbers (singular, dual, and plural); and its verbs, which assumed causal, desiderative, and frequentative forms, were carried in conjugation through three voices, the active, middle, and passive. Its chief fault—a result of its very richness—lay in the frequent use of long compounds, particularly adjectives, presenting what seems to us a confused combination of ideas, sometimes ludicrously lengthened out; as in the expressions, “always-to-be-remembered-with-reverence patriot,” “water-play-delighted maidenn-bathing-fragrant river-breezes” (that is, river-breezes made fragrant by the bathing of maidens delighted with sporting in the water). (Consult Dr. Perry’s “Sanscrit Primer.”)
